How can I unwrap an object with minimum distortion in the UVs?
Incase your doing some painting on it, and want the real size of your faces.
select whole object, mark seams (all face get seams) and unwrap.

There is another way for strange shapes that is a bit more configurable 
for better resulting maps.
In mesh edit menu, there is an option to select 'sharp' edges.
First deselect everything, then go fo 'sarp edges' select.
You can give a angle degree (using mouse slider), to select more or less sharp edges. Then do a mark seams, select all and perform uv unwrap.